Relax, Spidey fans. Disney’s acquisition of Marvel is a good thing

Are your spider-senses on overdrive from the news that Disney will acquire Marvel for $4 billion? Relax. Yes, it’s a big move, but a move that looks positively solid for both parties — especially for us fanboys.

Hit the jump for comments from Marvel’s own Joe Quesada and more highlights and thoughts.

Via Twitter, Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada assures us the acquisition of the House of Ideas is all good, noting that “all is well in the Marvel U” and “all your favorite comics remain unchanged.” Joe Q also links to Comic Book Resources for a bit more perspective, which offers bullet points from a Disney conference call with investors on the deal.

Here are some of those points from CBR:

• Existing licensing and distribution deals should remain where they are.

• Disney executives went to great lengths during the call to make the point that they don’t pretend to be more expert than Marvel is in handling their characters, citing the hands-off relationship Disney has had with Pixar since the acquisition of that studio. Disney said Marvel manages the properties from a business perspective very intelligently and trusts them to make the right decisions for these products for a long time to come.

• With respect to Paramount’s distribution deal with Marvel and the Iron Man franchise, Disney has every intention to respect the deal that’s in place, but noted that it’s in their best interest, over time, to become the sole distributor of Marvel films.

• Disney said this deal is expected to benefit Marvel’s retail efforts, being able to leverage Disney’s shelf space and relationships with major chains and distributors.

There’s more but those points alone sound win-win to me.

Too bad fans, at least those online, don’t sound so convinced.

I checked some polls at Newsarama and CBR about thoughts on the acquisition and was surprised to see so many folks downright terrified by all this. Really?

Look, could this all fail miserably? Sure. But couple Marvel’s aggressive branding (Quesada is right up there with Stan Lee in terms of trumpeting all things Marvel) with what looks to be a relatively hands-off Disney and you have an equation that should add up to big success.

Disney snagging Marvel is just like Warner Bros. owning DC Comics — a big company with access to a treasure trove of costumed characters. I doubt we should worry about editorial finagling; I’ve read DC books for some time now and don’t get any sense of editorial interference from the WB corporate bigwigs. If that was the case, I think they would have scuttled “killing” Batman in the comics when the character achieved such a high profile outside the comic shop thanks to “The Dark Knight.”

Besides, the comics are important but they’re small potatoes compared to licensing for cartoons, video games and, of course, movies. All the more reason our beloved Marvel titles should, as Quesada stresses, remain unchanged.

I’m not being a Pollyanna here. We’ve seen Marvel rise and fall before. And just like that painfully obvious Phoenix analogy you know is coming, this looks like an upswing for everyone. This should be good.